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Yeah, I agree 100% with you here.

My dad is a published poet, novelist, and short story writer, who supported that habit by teaching Creative Writing at a university until he retired a few years back. He wrote - and still writes - for profit, for fame (although I doubt you would have heard of him in spite of his having published 4 novels), for posterity, and also for all of the reasons we do - to share, to try to shine small lights on bits of life and truth, to play with forms and explore feelings and ideas, to have fun doing something that brings a sense of joy and satisfaction.

I have a certain amount of training and aptitude for writing that is my birthright, but I have no particular desire to turn pro. For me the world of agents, advances, editors, and deadlines would be a buzz killer. But I enjoy writing, and I have always given bits of writing as gifts, much as I used to make Christmas presents back when I was younger and my desire to be bountiful outstripped my meager income. The internet serves as a way to share on a different scale. Using the familiar world of a fandom, with its limitations of character and circumstance is a nice and refreshing way to work around the writer's block blank-page-blank-mind syndrome that sometimes strikes me for original fic, and it poses puzzles that don't happen in original fic where I can just change the character or circumstances, because in my own little world, I am God.

Does this make me a bad writer? No, although I do have my faults as a writer, and am quite aware of most of them. Does it make me unproductive? No. This is what I do in my limited time off from being a wife/mother/swim instructor/volunteer/fitness enthusiast. He speaks of painting unprofitably but for fun. I write unprofitably but for fun, and share some of that on the off chance that I can give pleasure.

To me it seems in many ways more "art for art's sake" to be sharing simply to give pleasure or share a thought or feeling through words, rather than doing the same thing for profit or to gain a share of posterity through spreading my work to millions.

So, O Converted, did you enjoy the sermon?